


Emotional Sounds

by chuusei_teki_na_koe



Series: Emotional Sounds on the Violin [3]
Category: Twosetviolin
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2021-02-18 13:27:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21711487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chuusei_teki_na_koe/pseuds/chuusei_teki_na_koe
Summary: I could play you Salut D'Amour a thousand times and you won't get it, because you don't want to get it,Eddy thought.They're in the middle of a tour, they're tired and stressed, they've been conned into making this video in an attempt to “help,” and it's not making things any better.
Relationships: Eddy Chen/Brett Yang
Series: Emotional Sounds on the Violin [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1580653
Comments: 30
Kudos: 124





	Emotional Sounds

**Author's Note:**

> The Tchaikovsky violin concerto was composed for Tchaikovsky's (male) lover, who was his student and a violinist. Melodie is from Souvenir d'un lieu cher, (memory of a dear place), and it's generally assumed that the "dear place" is a villa where he spent time with his lover.
> 
> The Tchaik is a popular piece for competitions and such because it's long, technically challenging and very showy, but it's like. Also a big, loud declaration of gay love. Just sayin'.
> 
> This fic is a sort of interpretation of the “Emotional Sounds on the Violin” video, so a lot of the dialogue is lifted from that.

Eddy asked a friend to dump some themed terms into a bag for charades, and he didn't find out until five minutes before they were going to film that the theme was “emotions.”

He recalled her little smile when she'd handed him that bag. That had definitely been the smile of a busybody. It was probably pretty obvious that things had been tense between him and Brett.

Was the idea to get them to talk? They'd done plenty of talking already, though. They'd talked and talked and talked. That was what had made things like this. Eddy was done with talking.

Whatever. They'd breeze through this, it'd just be fifteen minutes or so. Then maybe he'd have a bit of time for a nap. Just get it over with.

First draw. _Relaxed._

After a couple bars of _Humoresque,_ Brett was guessing, “Happy, joyful, frustrated, sad.” A couple notes of _Meditation,_ and it was “tired.”

 _Yeah, that's about right,_ Eddy thought with an inward sigh.

Brett kept looking away, off to the left. He was just as done as Eddy was. Eddy tried to force some cheer, but he knew he was looking tired.

A few draws in, and Eddy pulled _love._

“Agh, fuck,” Eddy cursed at the paper, and then he sighed. “Cut that.”

“What?” Brett asked with a curious look.

“Just let me play the thing.” This one would be an easy guess, anyway. Eddy played _Salut D'Amour,_ and he couldn't help looking at Brett, too. He was so bad at holding himself back.

“Romantic. Pleasure. Excited. Melancholy. Melancholy.”

...Or maybe Eddy was the only one who thought that would be an easy one to guess. He felt an unreasonable irritation building within him. _I could play you Salut D'Amour a thousand times and you won't get it, because you don't want to get it._

It really was just him, wasn't it?

So he tried Tchaikovsky's _Melodie_ instead, but Brett wasn't getting that, either. “Oh, I know...” Good ol' _Careless Whisper._

“Sexy! Sexual.”

Eddy let his violin slump with a sigh. Yeah, yeah, of course. That was all Brett thought it was, huh?

“Romantic. Love!”

“Yes!” A relieved laugh from Eddy. “Hard to say the one thing you don't have.”

“Ohh, the future!” Brett replied, tugging at his sweater as he referenced the same conversation they'd been having over and over again all week.

They had to laugh about it, or Eddy would probably cry.

x x x

Eddy was always so good at reading him. Or so Brett had thought.

Was there anything really inherently “happy” about Mozart 4, or did Eddy just know him? It was probably the latter.

So then Eddy knew. He understood, but he was still trying to push.

Eddy had always had a selfish streak. He expected Brett to take care of him, to handle things that he couldn't—or wouldn't. It wasn't a malicious thing. He was just the kind of guy who was so in his own head, he never really appreciated when he was causing stress for other people. That was exactly the sort of thing that had crashed his last relationship.

Well, it was one of the things that had crashed his last relationship.

After mashing out some Vivaldi and some scratchy sounds, one sneaky look was enough to clue Eddy in on _frustrated,_ and Brett laughed in spite of himself. That was easy enough to get right now, wasn't it? It kind of hurt to laugh about this, but what else could they do but laugh?

Next. _Desperate._

Flailing _Bumblebee._

“Stupid. Fake. Pretentious. Arrogant.”

Wrong direction. After a little frustrated plucking, Brett tried another angle. Tchaikovsky violin concerto.

Eddy was blatantly confused, and eventually, Brett just resorted to spelling it out. _D, E..._

Eddy never did get it, and when Brett revealed the prompt, said, “How is Tchaikovsky desperate?”

 _You don't think you're being desperate?_ Brett sighed inwardly, but he wasn't going to say any of this. It wouldn't help.

Next prompt: _passionate._

Brett started off with _Salut D'Amour._

“Love, romantic. Loving.” Tchaikovsky _Melodie._ “Sexy.”

He was just playing all the same things as Eddy, and they were so close, yet on different pages.

Brett went for the Tchaikovsky violin concerto again.

“Friendly. Friend zone.”

“Friend zone...” Brett cringed with a helpless laugh. “How is that an emotion?”

“It is an emotion!” They were both laughing, but he couldn't look at Eddy, didn't want to see his face. Then it would all go back to how this was hurting _Eddy,_ how _Brett_ had rejected _him,_ but Eddy didn't appreciate how it felt on the other end.

“Sad, sorrowful,” Eddy kept guessing, like he knew it was some kind of musical Rorschach test and he just had to rub it in. But Brett had already given that answer himself too many times.

Brett didn't know what to do, so he just kept going for Tchaikovsky. This one had always had that sort of meaning between them, hadn't it? But Eddy didn't get it. He didn't get it.

“Proud, majestic,” Eddy guessed, before resorting to a thesaurus to spew out a list of random words.

It was all wrong, and all Brett could keep doing was playing the Tchaikovsky.

Once, he had poured everything into this piece, and he'd thought that Eddy had gotten it—there hadn't been a need to say, a need to bring _that_ up, to mess things up like they were now.

“I forgot all the emotions,” Eddy said, tone flat.

Brett smiled weakly, and they skipped it.

x x x

“ _Why did you have to bring this up_ now?” _Sitting at the hotel room desk at his laptop, Brett rubbed his eyes and turned in his chair to face Eddy. He realized that was an insensitive thing to say, but he was tired. Tired and irrationally angry—though he knew he had no right to be._

_Eddy was standing in that space between the closet and the bed, an awkward distance away from Brett._

“ _I mean, you already know anyway, right?” Eddy said, and even without looking, Brett could tell he was hurt._

_Brett took a deep breath, tried to calm himself. “Yeah, I knew. I thought,” his eyes flicked back to the computer screen, “I thought you were okay with the way things are.”_

“ _I'm...not.”_

 _A whole slew of uncharitable thoughts ran through Brett's head._ Isn't this just because you got dumped, and you want someone else to fill the void? Now that it's convenient for you? You couldn't have said this years ago, huh? _Then again, neither had Brett. They were both guilty on that count. So Brett bit his tongue, and he chose his words carefully. “You know our friendship is the most important thing to me.”_

“ _I'm in love with you,” Eddy said, practically cutting him off. It was like he was pleading. “You love me, right?”_

_Brett exhaled a long, shaky sigh, eyes on the computer, then on the thin carpet. “I don't want anything to change.”_

_The conversation went on for hours. They were both tired, they had to get up early, but Eddy just wouldn't let go. This was the kind of selfish bullshit that was wearing Brett thin. It wasn't the first time Brett had worried about the future of Twoset. Their future? He knew how that sounded. But Brett didn't want to talk about the future anymore._

_It was Eddy's fault for hounding him. Brett didn't want to say anything hurtful. But Eddy wouldn't give up._

“ _It's not like you'd never do it, right?” Eddy pressed. “I know you're not totally, a hundred-percent straight.”_

“ _That's not the issue.” Brett shook his head. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, Eddy opposite him, sitting on the other bed. Brett just wanted to collapse into the sheets and fall asleep already._

“ _So then what is the issue?”_

Why'd you have to come out to literally everyone else before me, _Brett thought, but he held it back._ “ _Why do we have to change anything? We've been best friends for how many years—”_

“ _I've been in love with you since we were kids! I was always thinking about you, don't tell me you never felt anything—”_

“ _You're not gonna feel the same way as an adult as when you're fourteen.”_

“ _I_ do. _” Eddy's face was close, and he was staring straight at Brett with that usual puppy-dog look. Their knees were close, but not touching, and Eddy's eyes were saying he wanted to be kissed. He was begging for it, but he wouldn't be the one to cross if Brett was saying no._

“ _Why do we have to bring sex into it? We never did before.”_

_Eddy pulled back, pressing his lips together in frustration. “I want you,” he said, like that was an answer._

“ _Yeah, and I want to go to bed,” Brett muttered, flopping over with a groan._

“ _Let me sleep with you.”_

“ _No.”_

“ _Just to cuddle. We've slept in the same bed before, right?” The bare neediness in his voice was seeping deep under Brett's skin._

“ _Yeah, when I didn't know you had ulterior motives,” Brett said, checking his phone alarm before crawling under the covers and switching off the bedside lamp. He'd meant to say that in a joking way, but it came out too harsh. “Can we talk about this later? It's like...three AM.”_

“ _I can't sleep like this,” Eddy said, and Brett knew he was telling the truth. He'd keep himself up all night from the anxiety if Brett didn't say something to settle him, but Brett didn't know what to say._

_“I never should've said anything. I'm sorry. Fuck.”_ _The crack in Eddy's voice there made Brett want to give in to everything, give him everything he wanted. But that would be a lie, make a lie of their whole relationship, and that would be far worse._

“ _I'm not mad at you for telling me,” Brett said, trying his best to be gentle. “I want you to be open with me. I try to be open with you.”_

“ _Then tell me how you really feel about me.”_

“ _You know how I feel.”_

“ _Do you love me?”_

“ _I—” Brett began, then paused. “Not in the way you want.”_

_There was a silence, and then the sound of Eddy rolling over to face the other way. “Okay.”_

_Of course, of course Eddy would take that in the worst way._

_Brett had been in love with him, once._

_He'd been in love with him for a long time. But he'd figured it was a bad idea. It wouldn't add anything positive to Eddy's life, it would only cause the both of them stress. Brett didn't need that kind of relationship, anyway. And when Eddy had gotten a girlfriend, Brett had seen how good she was for him, and he'd known it would be selfish to interfere._

_When they had broken up, Brett had only been angry._

_He'd been choking down his feelings for over ten years. Whatever you regurgitate back up after that long would only be vomit. Why did Eddy want to change things now, dig into those old wounds? Brett had already let go of that. He'd poured every drop of passion he had into his music instead, and he had nothing left._

_In the dark, the sound of Eddy breathing was so loud. Brett knew he wouldn't be sleeping. Brett could practically hear the emotion in each exhale, and it made him want to cover his head with the pillow and scream._


End file.
